


Killing Equations

by RobberBaroness



Category: Papers Please (Game)
Genre: Assassination, Character Study, Dystopia, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waiting in a tedious immigration line provides lots of time for reflection.  Especially if what you're reflecting on is an upcoming political assassination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killing Equations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hl (hele)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hele/gifts).



> Thank you to SlowMercury for being my beta reader!

Natalya stopped for cigarettes on the way to the assassination, wondering at the prices such goods commanded in a supposedly socialist republic. Manufacture plus shipping plus scarcity plus addicts being notoriously easy to cheat added up to even more than her blue face paint- which, unlike the cigarettes, she actually needed in order to undermine the government. If she were in charge of Arstotzka, she’d soothe the angry masses with cheap indulgences while keeping the prices on costume materials so high that anyone who sought them out could be monitored.

Perhaps that was why EZIC relied on her for poisonings and not for political direction- fair enough.

The paint itself itched and Natalya had the dreadful suspicion it might leave a rash. But so what? Boris had gone through it last time without complaining, and the mission itself was fairly mundane. She wouldn’t have to suffer like Stepheni Graire, whose parents had given up everything to send her to safety as a child, only to return out of some (perhaps misguided) sense of duty.

“The immigration waiting line is hell,” Stepheni had told Natalya. “And Arstozka is purgatory. I kept thinking someone would arrive to drag me off any moment, like they did to others ahead of me in line. Made me want to forget manufacturing poison and just take up arms right then and there.”

“If we’re lucky, the rest of the country feels the same way,” Natalya replied.

If they were lucky. If they were truly lucky, the nation would hear of EZIC and associate the name with the old legends, the fairy tales told about the country back when it went under another name, back when their grandparents lived and learned the stories they would pass on of stars and angels and orders of sacred knights. If they were lucky, the nation would take them seriously enough to offer support but not so seriously that they would believe every story was true and start cult branches rather than resistance cells.

Natalya finished slathering on the makeup behind a building and pulled down her hood.

As her brave and clever leaders had repeatedly reassured her, the paint and robe were necessary. A _human_ revolutionary could grow corrupt or criminal or simply die having accomplished nothing, but EZIC was not human. Members of EZIC were ancient statues, saints in holy vestments, who wanted only the betterment of their people. A decent idea, but did it really have to come with such distinctive and gaudy discoloration? The hood was the only thing keeping everyone from spotting her while on line, and only because so many wrapped scarves and such about themselves in the harsh cold.

Another cost equation: fairy tales plus ideals plus dissatisfaction plus murder added up to a subversion of the status quo. But again, Natalya was an assassin and not a politician.

Getting a only a small distance out of the country was easy if you had the right government cover job, but when it came to getting in the immigration line- well, Stepheni hadn’t been joking about the sheer misery involved. For Natalya, what made her heart sink were the other immigrants- the real ones. There were the United Federation fools who came to visit family, the Obristan journalists who, if allowed in, would go home to pen impassioned editorials about the need for urgent action which would accomplish nothing, and worst of all, the Kolechian refugees who couldn’t afford their bribes and had to beg the soft-hearted inspector until he sometimes broke down and let them in. Unless his heating bills were mounting or there was an inspector nearby, in which case they would be dismissed or dragged off summarily.

Natalya didn’t need to worry about getting in. All _she_ had to worry about was being betrayed, arrested and executed. Luckily for her, everyone in the line in front of her looked even more suspicious than she did, blue face paint or no blue face paint.

_That one_ , Natalya told herself as she gazed upon a twitchy woman with hair pulled back so tight as to pinch her face, _is smuggling exotic spices free of tax_. This man with the green sweater, face downcast and movements slow, was a Kolechian agent. The pretty girl in the too-light jacket with the large, sad eyes was innocent but foolish, and would be denied due to rudimentary mistakes with her bribes.

It was a game she’d learned to play as a spy. Second-guessing herself could be fatal, and she had learned to rely on snap judgements. What better way to hone her instincts regarding those judgements than by making inconsequential ones? Even when she was wrong, she’d learn something. Understanding her mistakes was as valuable knowledge as success.

Sure enough, the downcast man was dragged off, guns to his head. The pinched-face woman stepped into the scanner, but was either more law-abiding or clever than Natalya had taken her for, and registered as clean. The pretty girl spoke for some time with the inspector, and perhaps she appealed to his conscience enough to be let in. Soft-hearted government workers were the savior of immigrants and damnation of their own households.

It was this same soft-hearted worker that EZIC was relying on, and it was hard for Natalya to quell her gut feeling that doing so was a potentially fatal mistake. Soft-hearted men were sympathetic to martyrs and young heroes, but to assassins? Would a kind man administer poison to a stranger, then stand quietly as he witnessed a horrible, body-wracking death? Would his hatred of the regime overcome his moral outrage, or would self preservation sway him one way or another?

A soft heart plus a dreadful life plus cold-blooded murder. What did that add up to? Natalya knew what it had meant in her case, but could say little about anyone else.

“Papers, please.”

She was close enough to the inspector to hear the words (thankfully- what would she have told her superiors if the line had moved so slowly neither she nor Khaled Istom passed through?) One more passport examined and it would be her turn…

“Cause no trouble.”

Natalya would have prayed for the best as she stepped up if she’d believed in anything concrete. Instead, she pretended to be a creature of myth, solid and incorruptible, so that she might commission a murder.


End file.
